Of Shadows On The Stars
by Myomi-chan
Summary: When Sakura, Hinata and Ino land spots in the prestigious Konoha Arts High School Academy, they think they're one step closer to achieving their dreams of becoming pop stars. But things are not always what they seem at a high school for artists. Can the girls survive four years at a school where everyone - even their friends - is considered competition?


.::Of Shadows On the Stars ::.

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**_Disclaimer: Puh-lease. As if Kishimoto could write a half-decent story with cliche themes and characters. (Wait a... Oh yeah.)_**

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.:: Chapter 0 - Part Writing ::.

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Music is color splashing through space, the inward soul floating through air. It echoes, bounces, showers down from the rooftops. Like starlight, it glitters, shines off her lips. She sings softly to herself. Tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant... Layers, emotion after emotion, feeling after feeling, pile up as she finds words from nothing to describe everything. Cadential I^6/4, V, perfect authentic, and suddenly everything is coming to a close. Power. Slowly but surely, the music seeps through her skin, from the paper into her fingertips, rushing through her veins, and then... Bam! Piercing notes, clear as crystal, and quick as it comes, it goes, voice flowing down the scale as she descends, running with all her might and breath. Tonic, leading tone, submediant, dominant... She's at the end, and now it's time to make it obvious. V-I, so, do, and finally...!

Breath, long and deep and full. Full enough that she could sing the whole thing again, but it's almost through, and so she finishes. Sweetly, sweetly, tenderly, she lets the precious third grow, then draws back as she glides down to the root, cradling it carefully, holding on tightly as she lets it fall away, fade into nothing. The reverberations throughout the sky tell her she's succeeded in stunning silence. Breathlessly (because no matter how much breath she saves after finishing, music always renders her to a gasping, hopeless thing chasing after those last notes she just exhaled), breathlessly, she lets her eyes slip downward. The magic disappears, and now it's acknowledgement. She brakes the spell by letting a hesitant smile trickle onto her face, and clapping, rhythmic at first, then syncopated, changing, louder, thunderous-!

Applause. Her heart leaps. Her smile grows as the clapping does. She bows, high above her audience, invisible, hidden in the clouds, but she pretends for a moment they can see her. The claps fade away; the crowd gathered on the sidewalk below her must be dispersing. She bites her lip; she needs to leave, too. Residents aren't supposed to go on the roof, but the sky was calling, and the breeze fluttering into the sunset had beckoned to her so temptingly...

Longingly, she purses her lips. Unbidden, almost (almost) unconsciously, she releases the softest of breaths, the third, then changes pitch, ending on the fifth instead; in her head, she imagines the orchestra, the woodwinds, the brass, advancing and receding beneath her, a quiet, suppressed crescendo and decrescendo, a growth as unseen as she was to the passerby below.

The wind tickles her face, massages her skin soothingly, and the sun at the horizon smiles faintly, draping a fading stream of sunset across the girl. Without thinking, she lets go of the paper; it slides through her fingers, and when the wind catches it, it rides away, after wherever her song had flown to. But it doesn't matter. She knows the words and notes by heart.

The girl closes her eyes, bathing in the dying day, and after a moment or two, inhales deeply, turns around sharply, and walks briskly to the door.

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A girl watches television as she minds a pan of pasta sauce. A bit of the tomato juice bubbles up, pops out, and nips at her wrist. She curses, bringing the wound to her lips while hurriedly (but cautiously) stirring the pan of sizzling meat and tomato sauce with a wooden spoon in her left hand. A pot of boiled spaghetti already sits atop a counter to the right of the flat-screen, a lid covering it to keep it warm. The girl shakes her wounded hand (the pain is pretty nearly gone now) and focuses again on the news.

A familiar face appears as the anchor introduces a small video clip. It's a snippet of a performance, of a dark stage suddenly flooded with spotlights and strobe lights and dancers and singers dressed in sequined dresses and shiny, almost steely stilettos, and descending from the top of the lighted stairwell (she knows it's connected to the catwalk above that techies use - she's used it herself before), a girl dressed in midnight purple. The dress (gown really) is intended to imitate the night sky, and it does; it drips silkily around its wearer's body, falling almost like a waterfall around her. The pink hair tied up behind her head is so strikingly gorgeous against the backdrop of glittering clothing and the purple gown that it makes the blonde watching television gasp. The girl with pink hair is pale, and descends slowly, taking as much time as she chooses to while the song around her builds up.

Suddenly the video clip is cut, and another is showing; the pink-haired girl is crooning into a microphone, holding it close to her, eyes closed tightly.

But the blonde knows they're green.

The clip finishes, and the pink-haired girl's slow, painful song about losing a lover to love goes unfinished; the anchor moves on to talk about - of all things! - sports.

Annoyed, the blonde puts down the spoon she's been stirring with and reaches for the remote to her left. She grabs it, turns the flat screen off, and turns her attention back to her food. The sauce is finished, and as she glances up at the plain-but-functional clock on the wall, she realizes she has just enough time to finish eating before she has to leave.

She has a show tonight.

She begins to hum, and unintentionally, she hums the pink-haired girl's love song. The music builds up too much to be JUST hummed, so she switches to a light, closed vowel; but the climax of the song is approaching, and she can't help but begin to belt. She knows she'll regret it later, but for now, the moment is where she's at. Her spaghetti and accompanying sauce are forgotten as the blonde glides from her condo's kitchen into her living room area. A piano is placed against the wall, and she sits on the bench, not pausing as she reaches out her hands and begins to play the chords beneath her. A, C, C, and now a surprising seventh chord meant to begin a modulation. She plays, instinctively knowing that she's moving towards the parallel major. She knows it's not in the music, but she throws in a bit of pizazz, a sprinkle of improv, and it works so well she decides to repeat back from the previous verse.

She has perfect pitch, and she never gets lost while singing, even when she's belting out notes so loud she can't possibly hear the accompaniment below her. Its part of why she's a Broadway star, but only a small part. Its really the fact that she's a triple threat (actor, dancer, singer) that's made her the starlet she is.

Now it's time to croon. She drops her vibrato, lets a clear straight tone A stab the chords she's plunking out on the piano, and finally, she resolves, and her voice is resigned to losing love itself, not just her lover. The words are tender, so she sings it as tenderly as possible, lingering for a moment before finishing with a spree of glissandos in the piano part.

She doesn't take her foot off the piano pedal until the overtones begin to fade away. Then she hops up, runs to the kitchen, and grabs a bowl from the cupboard. She has even less time now, and the Broadway needs her. She has to be there.

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She taps the music stand in from of her with a pencil. She bites her lip. A new music techie - she doesn't know his name yet - is snapping at her to continue. To spite him, she takes her time, slowly drawing in a lift between measures 27 and 28. Right in between the words "me" and "You."

She's never been happily in love before. The words to this song are so foreign to her, but she can take it. Dropping her pencil on the stand, she nods at the darkened glass separating her from the techies on the other side. She reaches up, adjusts the microphone in front of her, and presses her right hand over her headphones, holding the right piece closer to her ear.

Her right ear is her good ear. Oh, her hearing is perfectly fine, but if she doesn't hear the music in her right ear, she's more likely to go off-key. It doesn't matter much in the style of music she sings, but she WANTS to stay in-key, on-pitch.

Her best girl friend never screws up pitches the way she does. Perhaps it's because of their childhood rivalry, but she can't bear to lose to her friend, even though missing a pitch isn't necessarily "losing" anything.

Her thoughts cut off as music crashes into her eardrums. A steady beat from the drums, then guitar chords, slow, lengthy at first, then a firmata, a dramatic pause, and then they take off running, strumming, while synthesized instruments - strings - accompany in a painfully sentimental way.

She breathes, and lets fly.

Raw emotion. Using her everyday voice (her friend refers to it as chest voice) she croons, making music from text on a page. That's all a song is: text, a poem, words felt so strongly that they can't be contained by simply SAYING them. She acknowledges that it's not all there is to music, but to her, it's the most basic, most fundamental aspect of it.

Because words give meaning. Give intent. Give use, give purpose, give life.

The story goes like this: a girl falls in love with the popular boy. She's too shy to tell him, but in the end, he loves her back, too. The end of the song practically paints a golden sunset for her and him to ride off into together, with triumphant, hopeful chords and a crystal clear G floating above it all, meant to be the shining sunlight and the promise of lasting love (that's also why the note's so long, she's nearly gasping for breath at the end).

She reflects how silly and hopeful it is. She feels a pang in her heart, and unbidden, her voice cracks.

The music quickly stops. The techie complains as she pulls herself together.

She's no longer naive enough to believe in fairy tale endings, but the audience this song is geared towards isn't.

She'll act, so they'll still believe.

She nods, the music starts again, and she throws her other thoughts to the wind. This time, she completely immerses herself in the words, the story; the story is what gives HER hope, makes HER happy.

Music is what she lives for, and she plans on keeping it that way.

With or without a fairy tale.

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**A/N: I've got a new story idea... But I don't plan on actually writing it out too much until after Icewater's over, or at least nearly over. Which it's not.**

**Sorry. I know. Updates. I'm working on it.**

**On that happy note, what do you guys think? I really enjoyed it! :) These are a few perspectives on music. You can probably guess who's who XD I'll be changing the story description later.**

**I love the arts. The new story idea I have focuses on exploring the relationships between music, culture, history, society and all the arts, as well as addressing the necessity for the creative arts. I find that while most people have a most favorite and least favorite art, all the arts are equal in their effects and impact on society, literature, and history.**

**So. Do tell me what you think.**


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